This week, we will start with some words about your language portfolio in general and one of its parts.

Language Portfolio in General

In order to create a good portfolio, it's necessary to keep in mind the purpose of the portfolio. The purpose of the portfolio is to show 1. you have a good enough level of English to be successful and 2. to show that you are able to assess evidence of language level (because you are studying to become teachers and will later be assessing other people's work). These two parts of the reason for it are the most important to remember.

There are a few reasons why the portfolio should be useful.

• The portfolio is something that you will be using in all of your Practical Language classes at university. So it is useful for you now to put time into it as it will be a part of your evaluation to pass those classes.
• It is a record of your current language level and your personal growth in the language. So it should be useful to you in similar ways as the goals are: as ways of helping you reflect on the process of developing your language and making it better. The development can be important, but it is also important to show where you are at the moment - what you are able to do right now.
• You are all studying to become teachers. So the use of the portfolio should also help to get you used to the idea of using different methods of evaluation than only tests.
• There are increasing numbers of employers around Europe and the rest of the world that look for things like these portfolios as evidence of self-direction and language skills. So the portfolios could be useful when applying for a job or applying to study at another university.

The portfolios should represent something that you can hand to someone who has not seen this kind of portfolio before and does not know what you did in classes and have them see what your level of English is in a variety of areas.

As mentioned above, your language portfolio is something you will be developing throughout your time here at university. It includes a record of your growth in your language skills. Any time you do something that you feel is a good example of improvement in language (whether it is a nice essay (whether in Practical Language or Literature or wherever), or a recording, or anything else), you can add it to your portfolio (this is what is called an "artifact" in the Course Requirements). At the end of your studies, your portfolio will be used as evidence of sufficient language level to be successful.

The portfolio is yours and yours alone. This means that it does not have to look like the portfolios of your classmates, but should reflect you in some way. At the bookstore at the faculty there are portfolios made to fit with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). These portfolios can be useful, but note that they are focused almost solely on the CEFR and so might not fit your purpose perfectly. There is also not as much space for other documents than the CEFR. The focus of the portfolios for this class is on what you have to say about what you include.

When you are constructing your portfolio, it is important to think about it as a whole - it's not merely a bunch of papers in a binder; it is telling the story of who you are as a language learner.

Comprehensive Self-Assessment

We will go through the parts of the portfolio piece by piece. For now, we are skipping the introductory letter and dealing with the second bullet point: "A comprehensive self-assessment of each major language area".

We dealt with self-assessment to some degree last week with Setting Goals, and you can look there for thoughts on what that means. In that case, though, we were looking for specific details. With the portfolio, we are looking for a more general description.

This means that you need to look at all of the major areas of skills (reading, listening, spoken production, spoken interaction, and writing (note that this does not include "grammar" or "vocabulary" as separate areas, though you can include them in the language quality area)) and think about what you are able to do in those areas. This means thinking about what kinds of things you can manage in English and also what kinds of situations you might be able to do them in. For example, as a person's level goes up in a language they generally are able to move from only speaking about themselves to speaking about more general topics they are interested in to more general topics to highly specialized topics. So think about what in general you are able to do.

You can incorporate statements from places like the CEFR into your self-assessment, just remember two things. One is that you always need to cite a source when you take words, phrases, ideas, or anything else from another source. Otherwise, you are committing plagiarism, which is a serious problem.

The other thing is that it is nice to see a portfolio that is yours, as well, meaning one that includes your general impressions. So you can think about how each area fits into a larger whole (e.g., by comparing your skills in various areas).

Keep in mind that this self-assessment should be more general. You will get into details in other parts of the portfolio. You should also remember that you want it to be as accurate as possible - this means including strengths and abilities as well as weaknesses and areas in need of improvement. A comprehensive self-assessment includes both sides of every area.

So this week you should work on your general self-assessment. If you have any questions about it, please ask in the discussion forum for this class.